Martin Amis’s Holocaust novel The Zone of Interest finds German publisher
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Version 0 of 1. Martin Amis’s latest novel, The Zone of Interest, has finally found a German-language home six months after it was turned down by his long-standing German publishing house, thought by many to have baulked at the prospect of promoting a comedy set in a fictionalised Auschwitz. The Swiss house Kein und Aber (literally “None and But”) said it was taking on a novel it believed would have both critical and commercial success in the German-speaking world, despite the decision by Munich-based Hanser Verlag to turn it down. It will also republish two early novels by Amis – The Rachel Papers and Money – which have been out of print in German for a decade. The Zone of Interest is to due to be published in September as “Interessensgebiet’” in a translation by Werner Schmitz, following what Kein and Aber’s founder described as a “marriage of minds” between Amis and the Zurich-based house. “We’re delighted to have Martin Amis on board,” Kein und Aber’s Peter Haag told the Guardian. “I believe he is one of the top authors in contemporary English literature and he also has a very unusual and satirical view of the world.” Amis’s long-standing relationship with Hanser, which had published his five previous books, came to an end when it turned down the chance to publish The Zone of Interest because, according to Amis, the publisher had had reservations about its literary merits, in particular remaining unconvinced by his plot and one of the characters. The far more widespread view, however, is that the decision was based on unease about publishing a book set in a fictionalised Auschwitz which has variously been described as a “brutish comedy” and a “satire on bureacracy, sex and death”. “Of course in Germany there’s a lot of hand-wringing over how to deal with the Holocaust in a narrative manner, and there were considerable reservations about touching this book,” Haag said. He drew parallels with the American-born French writer Jonathan Littell’s 2006 best-selling novel The Kindly Ones whose fictional protagonist is a former SS officer. It received a mixed reception in Germany largely due to its subject matter. “There’s a feeling that when humour begins, all seriousness ceases but that’s not true,” Haag said. He said The Zone of Interest, which tells the story of a love affair between the camp commandant’s wife and a Nazi officer, was “an important book not least from the perspective that we will always need new points of view from novels on this topic. “I can’t understand why Hanser didn’t publish it.” When Hanser turned it down, the outcry in Germany was considerable. “The scandal surrounding The Zone of Interest is this: that a German publisher believes it should withhold the work of one of the most important British authors of our age from German readers,” Alan Posener of Die Welt wrote. Kein and Aber is a medium-sized Zurich-based publishing house, founded in 1997 which counts among its recent successes the publication of David Nicholls’ international bestseller One Day and its follow-up, Us (Drei auf Reisen). Among its bestsellers is an audiobook of Winnie-the-Pooh. It has published a wide range of English-language authors from Flann O’Brien and Woody Allen to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Truman Capote. Amis, who is no doubt relieved to have finally regained access to the German-language publishing scene with its potential audience of 100 million readers, welcomed the chance to join Kein und Aber’s ranks. “It’s a fine list and I’m very proud to join it,” he wrote to Haag in an email on Monday. Haag said German readers would now get the chance to rediscover Amis, who has never been as popular with them as his contemporaries Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes. Kein und Aber is also to republish his first novel, from 1973, The Rachel Papers (as Das Rachel Tagebuch) as well as Money (Gierig), though there are no plans as yet to republish his other Holocaust-set novel, Time’s Arrow (Pfeil der Zeit), which was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1991. Of the earlier novels, Haag said: “I found it so embarrassing that they’d been out of print in German for at least a decade so when we were negotiating the publishing deal I said I’d like to republish those in paperback as soon as possible. “Money in particular has such relevance in the times we’re living in.” |